Selecting a REAL Chef!

This is a follow-up article to the pdf attachment on interviewing a GM or VP of Operations that was linked to my article on Guerrilla Recruiting in Dawson Creek. That list of "interview questions with desired answers" contained a great deal of this material, since any leader in this business worth anything at all has to be extremely conversant with kitchen operations and leadership.

Yes, a rare trait. In my experience, only 10% of front of house leaders can deal with that interview. For this Chef interview, my experience has been in recruiting Excecutive Chefs for very large companies that the successful candidates barely earn a passing mark in this interview....60% or so is best I've witnessed.

Ready for the challenge? It's OK....the desired answers are listed below the questions....so what we have here is an Operations Manual précis for a kitchen or all the kitchens in a large company. For far more detailed answers to these questions, check out many of the other articles on this site!

HERE WE GO!!!

• What do you look for in your hiring?

Personal Skills

-wow 1st impression, sparkling personality, great smile

-brains, interest in arts and sciences, a reader and studier

-well-spoken, articulate

-enthusiasm, drive, energy

-sense of humor and fun

-punctuality, reliability, commitment

-team player, history of good relations upwards and downwards

-goal oriented, competitive, has tasted success

-confidence and self-esteem, no defensiveness

-honesty with others and self

-a self-starter with initiative

-adaptability and ingenuity

-follow standards, but not blindly….a smart and cooperative rebel

-mentally/physically organized, systematic

-clean safe work habits

-welcomes supportive criticism, appraisals

-productive attitude, strong work ethic, disciplined routine

-takes accountability for self development

??????????? Leadership Skills

-a constant recruiter as a way of life

-great insight into character, quick and accurate preliminary reads on people

-caring, empathetic, develops rapport and two-way loyalty

-capable of handling many relationships while still balancing personal life

-sincerity and integrity, strong principles

-maturity and calmness

-drive, passion, fire, fun

-patient, supportive, trusting, encouraging credit giver

-charismatic, influential, upbeat, warm, positive, optimistic

-a people investor, shares personal time/space

-trainer, coach, cultivator, role model, mentor

-learns fast, grasps complex ideas completely

-open minded, flexible, ingenious, inspirational

-reflective, analytical, logical thinker, an auditor

-keen, penetrating, incisive intelligence-- a great planner

-logical, clear, concise communicator, computer literate

-cuts to the chase, action oriented, holds people accountable

• ?Any particular characteristics?? (Follow up question to above to try and get the candidate to give “character” non-stock answers.)

• How do you like to structure and develop your kitchen team?

Fully accountable sous-chefs running days and nights, working closely with a single fully accountable FOH manager.?? Day sous-chef runs the day time, night sous chef runs the night team.? Each has an assistant that is a working cook for three shifts per week and runs the show two shifts per week.

Night shift solely interested in sales and a perfect close and regarded as the recruiters for the whole kitchen.? Maintain large pool of part time dishwashing recruits and “chum” that pool for talent to move up the line.? Look for people who recruit their own replacements and self-study for the next station.? Move up the line from quick eye hand assembly jobs up to more complex protein cooking and coordination jobs.? Keep an eye out for potential leaders who are good cooks, but more importantly are great team players and encouragers/coordinators of others.?? Aim for all full time cooks on the entrée team for better food quality/service times and having a pool to choose from for the day team.

Graduate top cooks from the line to the day team, where they learn cold and then hot prep, and cook on the line for lunches.? Day sous chef responsible for inventory control and highly productive quality food prep in addition to lunch sales and a clean turnover to the night team.? Day sous chef gets to select whoever he wants from the night team, driving the night team to recruit single-mindedly.?

• What is the difference between a leader, manager, and a good staff member?

??????????? A leader recruits, develops and relies on the inner resources of the great picks.? A manager gets in the way of good performance and interferes a lot.? A good staff member intelligently questions every decision and influences the business tactics.

• ?How much time do you spend in the kitchen versus the office or in meetings??

??????????? 80% kitchen time, never in meetings or office during lunch or dinner.

• Discuss prep cooking versus line cooking and the demands of the two areas.

Prep cooking is harder, because it demands more knowledge and organization.? Each job has it’s own particular setup and flow and you have to think ahead more.? Line cooking is more routine because the line and each task are more staged.

• ?What are the most important elements of management?

Recruiting and selection.? Real delegation with objective follow-up, but no micromanagement.? Allow sous chefs to really run their own business but follow their hiring and mentorship of promising staff very closely. Structured training, development and promotion from within.? Routine assessments and one on ones. Honesty.?? Respect.? High standards and clear measurement tools of those standards.? Solid business planning and budgeting.?

• How do you guarantee good food?

Visionary hiring and meticulous training.? Chef’s primary responsibilities and 80% of his/her schedule are hiring and training.? A sales culture in the production area.? Approved product list.? Painstaking ordering pars and receiving practices. Accurate prep pars.? Strong division of responsibilities and specialists in all areas.? Promotion of cooks by character, with a well developed hierarchy of training.? Cross-training disciplined by well developed schedule consisting largely of full-time individuals for consistency.? Relief cooks for multiple stations considered senior candidates for promotion.? Daily cooler checks and shiftly line food inspections.? Bottlenecks eliminated in physical design of kitchen.?

• ?What do you do if your food is inconsistent in quality or speed of delivery?

Assuming a strict approved products list and appropriate ordering pars and receiving practices, then quality problems are not due to poor ingredients.?? Inspect each and every product in the cooler, ensure appropriate storage and rotation of raw and prepped products.? Inspect each and every product in the line before each meal period and throw out anything questionable.? Trace back how it got stocked in the line in the first place and retrain anyone necessary.?

Speed of delivery (and frequently quality) is going to come from a problem in kitchen design, training, scheduling or coordination.? First step is to pull the chef out of production and audit a full day of operation, looking for bottlenecks and training problems.? If you can’t pull the chef out of production you are already in serious trouble.? Ensure the call person on the line is not also responsible for cooking proteins (i.e. grilled or roasted steaks, fish, chicken etc.)? This will cause poor coordination and also poor attention to the cooking of center-of-the-plate expensive products about which the customers are justifiably the fussiest.??? The poor attention to coordination of the other stations will also ensure poor speed of service and frequently poor quality.? Watch for bottlenecks in systems, communication and equipment layout.? Ensure pre-portioning of multiple ingredient items to guarantee consistency and speed.?

Most important:? ensure pride and a sales mindset in the kitchen with respect for servers and every conversation coming back to the customer’s experience.

• ?How do you ensure quick service from the kitchen?

Sales culture fostered in the kitchen through daily review of the sales mix.? Mental and physical preparedness for the peak periods.? Schedule full staff early in the rush and have them just panting for the tickets to come in.? The first 15 minutes of the peak period determine the success of the entire meal period. To reinforce preparedness ask them if they are fully stocked and then tell them you are locking the cooler doors for the next three hours during the rush.?

• What types of standard food controls do you use?

Weekly inventories.? Track inventory usage versus sales, especially the top 50 commodities.? Accurate and tight ordering pars, aiming for 25% of weekly sales in stock.?? Cooler inspections.? Line items either pre-portioned or use appropriate scoop or measure each and every time they are served.? A non-waste culture, predicated on 25% of the world’s population being undernourished.?? “There are people starving all over the world” should be a catchphrase when waste is witnessed.? Post results promptly each week and talk up the successes and opportunities in pre-shifts.

• Have you ever opened a new restaurant?? If so, outline your opening plan.

Day -1:? Full scale drill with invited guests, set menu at each table to simulate expected sales mix.

Day -2:??? Full scale drill with staff simulating guests.

Day -3:??? Kitchen full scale drill without service, servers drilling POS and table flow, tasting and describing food.

Day -4:?? Kitchen apps/salad separate drill from entrée side.?? Servers drilling POS, tray carrying, tasting and describing food.

Day -5:? Kitchen cooking individual items.?? Servers role playing table service, drilling POS.

Day -6:? Prep kitchen training.? Servers writing food and liquor test.

Day -7:? Prep kitchen training.? Servers hospitality attitude training.

Day -8:? Prep kitchen training.?

Day -9?? Label coolers and prep carts.? Label line.

Day -10? Receive perishables.

Day -11:?? Receive, set up and label dry storage.

Day -12:? Organize and label prep kitchen.

Day -13:? Receive smallwares.

Days -14 to 18? Inspect site and set up outside services, complete all trades defiency lists, inspect and calibrate all cooking equipment, refrigeration. Electrical and plumbing complete and circuit breakers correctly labeled.

• ?Discuss margin versus cost of sales and how it applies to various menu categories.

Higher margin on low prep high ticket items allows for a higher percentage food cost and pays down non-controllables quickly.? It also puts the most money on the bottom line while contributing to better cash flow.? These are usually the grilled/broiled/roast categories.??? Ensure a reasonable margin on high prep items, usually going for a lower percentage food cost to allow for the labour.? This tends to be salads/appetizers, pizza and panfry.

• ?How do you go about increasing sales?

Server product knowledge and appropriate number of tables per server.? Sales oriented kitchen.? Avoid seating waves through diligent training and monitoring of door.? Feature and promote constantly the high ticket signature items that are lower than expected on the sales mix.? Maximize seats without crowding.? Staff the kitchen fully and expect bill times to equal cooking times.? Streamline your menu and deliver very quick service and maximize your peaks before adding other businesses such as brunch.

• ?How do you recruit staff in a tight labor market?

Aggressively recruit from retail, fitness centers and from other restaurants with attractive fun staff and management who have an eye for talent.? No pressure...”just come in for a coffee,” and start a relationship.

Host recruiting parties inviting all those we have contacted.? Circulate in the party and have fun, then go for commitment if they are teetering.

• How do you maintain a long-term kitchen staff?

Respect.? Cleanliness and organization.? Full training program with hierarchal structure in which it is obvious how to move up the ladder.? Circulate front of house managers through the kitchen.?? Recruit in-house from bus people and bar porters.? Promote kitchen supervisors to FOH management and make that the standard career path.

• ?What is an appropriate inventory figure in relation to sales?

Depends on concept and how busy the establishment is.? 25%-35% of weekly food sales dollars in stock is in the right ballpark.

• Discuss cutting labor versus increasing productivity.

Cutting labor kills your concept.? Use $ sales per labour-hour instead of percentage figures.? Track sales per labour-hour for every hour you are open and set standards.? Look for too high a sales per labour-hour early in the rush followed by very low for the remainder of the sales period….indicates poor preparedness followed by overscheduling.? Look for ways to increase sales rather than cut labor.? Focus on reduced footsteps and maximized repetitive hand motions in the prep kitchen.? Invest in personal uninterrupted individual training.

• How do you build a kitchen schedule?

?????????? Plot predicted hourly sales onto sales per labour-hour spread sheet.? Add appropriate number of labour-hours every hour to service the customer well, using pre-determined standards of productivity for your concept and menu.? Strive for extremely high prep productivity, closing productivity and shoulder period productivity, so you can stock the line as much as possible to drive sales.

?????????? Then write a hierarchal schedule from the top down, starting with Day Sous, Day Coach, Prep Team, mids and splits.? Then Night Sous, Night Coach, then top of entrees all the way down through the line to dishwasher.? Plot two days off together for everyone, using senior relief personnel for days off.?Go for 75% full time, 25% part time for team-building and flexibility.

• ?How do you build an order guide with accurate par stocks?

??????????? Print out 4 weeks of theoretical ingredient movement from your food cost control program.? Divide by 4 to average it.? Calculate the % of your weekly business that each delivery covers and create “build-to” par stocks for all fresh refrigerated products.? Round up to full case sizes.? Build “order-at” par stocks for all non-perishables.

??????????? Predict monthly sales a week ahead of time and revise these par stocks.?

??????????? Use a 4-6 week par stock sheet so you can review running on-hand to order ratios to keep the levels tight without running out.? Always save the previous months par stock sheets.

• How do you build a prep par sheet?

??????????? Keep four weeks of week-to-date food sales by item sold posted at all times in the kitchen for daily and weekly review.? Use the highs of each day from each week as your guide.?? Divide these numbers by the average of the four weeks sales for your fresh “build-to” pars.? Then set 7 incremental levels of sales that cover you from you slowest day to your busiest day (eg.? 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000, 10000 dollars sales in a day.)? The Day Sous will pick the expected sales for the day first thing in the morning depending on weather, and local events.

??????????? For “make-at” bulk prep pars, make the product at the highest days sales level so you always have your busiest day’s stock on hand and everything gets a chance to build flavours and textures overnight.? Make enough to last the full holding time to keep prep labour low.

• How do you set up a prep kitchen and organize production?

??????????? Divide tasks up by equipment to eliminate bottlenecks, then by judgment, then by physical skills.? Do all hot prep first thing to eliminate waiting time at shift end.? Have a separate daily inventory for each station.? Identify daily “build-to” fresh items and bulk “make-at” items carefully.? Ensure par levels for “build to” items are based on the high of each day the last four weeks sales.? Set “make-at” levels at highest days sales in last four weeks and build it to what will last to the maximum life of the product in “average” days sales.? Make sure the par sheets are made up in order of production and develop a routine that includes staged trips to storage areas and to holding areas.? Have dry goods sufficient right at the station so that only one trip per day is needed for restock no matter what products are scheduled that day.?

• How do you set up a kitchen line?

??????????? Cooking line in order of longest to fastest cooking equipment with call at long end and finish at the quick end.? Items in cold table tops and cold table doors zoned by usage.? No more than a half step for any product ever.? Doors and drawers labeled inside and out.?? Priorized routine line set list and closing checklist that are dovetailed.?? Ensure either label or map of inserts and doors includes appropriate measuring utensil.? Ensure food labels include portion weights.? Crib sheets for each station that list products in order of cooking time with all components that go into the dish and onto the plate.?

• How do ensure good maintenance on your equipment at a reasonable cost?? How do you budget for it?

Chef to “own” the equipment and spend every second with any service tech who is in the building.?Read the entire manual on each piece of equipment and set up the recommended maintenance program.? Schedule an all day meeting with principal and top service tech of the best service company in town and develop a cleaning and maintenance calendar for each piece.? Price the standard parts that fail through regular use of the equipment and predict usage of those parts.

• Describe a good kitchen cleaning schedule.

Almost don’t need one.? Every shift, every station, every piece of equipment and surface area perfectly clean 100%.? Not “restaurant” clean….REALLY clean.?

DISNEYLAND CLEAN!

Cooler shelves, dry storage assigned to dishwasher and scheduled when not in use, rotating through the shelving on the slowest days.? Each shelf unit emptied and cleaned weekly.

• Do you prefer working with experienced or novice staff?

Novice.? No bad habits.? Unless one finds an exceptional person with good experience from a top-quality establishment who is very open-minded and adaptable.

• Discuss one stop shopping versus multiple suppliers.

One stop shopping good if well negotiated.? Reduces communications, receiving and paperwork and packages your buy into a bigger business for the supplier, making you a more attractive customer and getting a better deal.? Need to have an “auditing” clause in the contract and USE it.? Need to put the business out to the marketplace routinely, especially if expanding in sales.

• How do you maintain good relations between service and production?

Hire the right people as per question one.? Insist on mutual respect.? Rotate servers through kitchen shifts and cooks through server shifts.? Deflate pressure situations then sit down with both parties at end of shift.? Sales mentality in the kitchen.

• How would you describe your management style?

??????????? Trainer and nurturer with high expectations and well explained standards. Recruit the right people, and then use training to reinforce natural gifts. Give credit and praise, but not gratuitously.? Act quickly with one-on-ones to correct.? Use open ended questions to teach.? NO babysitting.? Praise in public and counsel in private.

• Describe a good relationship between a GM and a KM.??? How does the KM relate to the rest of the management team?

??????????? Full partners who share their values and principles. KM is senior to all other management but influences rather than commands.? The GM/KM influence all front and back management equally.? The night manager/night sous chef and day manager/day chef work in exactly the same manner with their department heads and staff.

• ?What are your priorities when troubleshooting a kitchen?

????????????????? Develop a kitchen leadership grid and fill that grid.? At least two “right hand people” of good quality for the chef, running days and nights. Then four more coaches: Day, Night, Lineset, Prep.

????????????????? Appropriate pro forma schedule to the sales potential of the operation.? Staffing to that schedule.? Lead the recruiting drive, using FOH leaders, since we are probably already desperately short of cooks and the kitchen leadership is probably working overtime in stations.

????????????????? Cooler and dry storage organization, inventory levels and ordering system.

????????????????? Prep organization, productivity and quality.

????????????????? Dishwashing stable.

????????????????? Line organization and equipment maintenance.

????????????????? Line coordination, service times and food quality.

????????????????? Server pickup coordination.

????????????????? Hostess seating organization.

????????????????? Support sales through server training and in store features of high margin signature menu items.

• ?????????????What are your priorities in redesigning or organizing a kitchen to increase sales and profits?

??????????? Ensure a return-on-investment calculation on every expenditure on equipment or renovation.

??????????? Quickest return to bottom line is from prep productivity.? Work in this area also frequently improves food quality and lowers inventory costs.

??????????? Reorganize the line with existing equipment.? Facilitate quick access to products from coolers.? Ensure cooler temperatures are safe.?? Label the coolers and inserts.?

??????????? Develop a closing checklist to ensure a clean restaurant and a consistent picture every morning for minimal setup for great lunch service.

??????????? If necessary, renovate the shelving inside the cold tables to receive trays directly from prep carts.

??????????? Ensure systematic quick plate access for each line position.? Hot plates for hot food, cold plates for cold food.

??????????? Appropriate pickup areas for cold and hot food.

??????????? Printers or screens in appropriate places, with tickets organized from longest to quickest cooking items.?? Good coordination systems between entrees, apps, desserts, salad stations.?? Every ticket timed and reviewed at end of rush to establish quick service times.

??????????? Reorganize cooking line in order of longest cooking equipment to quickest cooking with appropriate cold storage underneath and opposite the equipment.

• What are some of the proudest moments of your career so far?

Ideally hoping for people development or company cultural development answers here, but don’t mind answers regarding high sales and profits, restaurant openings especially in new markets, or even learning how to balance one’s life.